Last year we were planning to go to Hawaii in February, but some serious family medical stuff resulted in that trip being cancelled.

This year we’re planning to go to Hawaii at the end of April. Due to pricing, logistics and some flight vouchers we were booked on Aloha Airlines for the outbound leg and Southwest (operating via ATA) for the return trip. (You can probably see where this is going.)

First, Aloha discontinued operations. This move trapped my Stepdad in Hawaii last week and necessitated the purchase of a super-full-fare return ticket to get him home. It also required finding alternative transport on another carrier for our end of April trip. We booked a one way flight to Honolulu on Hawaiian Airlines for approximately $200 more than our previous tickets, and Wells Fargo refunded the full amount of my previous tickets on Aloha. So we’re all set…

Next, ATA discontinued operations. I don’t know what Southwest intends to do about this yet, but we bought the tickets using vouchers, so they’ll probably issue more vouchers. Having little faith in this, I decided to try booking a different one-way return leg. Suffice to say that this would have been expensive. Lo and behold, United now had rewards travel available on the days we were flying, so for the low low price of $20 and 70k air miles we now have round trip tickets to Hawaii. Yeah!

If anything else goes wrong with this trip I’m staying home. I know when to take a hint…